Alfred De Vigny Quotes

We shall find in our troubled hearts, where discord reigns, two needs which seem at variance, but which merge, as I think, in a common source - the love of the true, and the love of the fabulous.

The true God, the mighty God, is the God of ideas.

Of what use is the memory of facts, if not to serve as an example of good or of evil?

Of what use were the arts if they were only the reproduction and the imitation of life?

On the day when man told the story of his life to man, history was born.

Do you not see with your own eyes the chrysalis fact assume by degrees the wings of fiction?

The first among mankind will always be those who make something imperishable out of a sheet of paper, a canvas, a piece of marble, or a few sounds

Only silence is great; all else is weakness.

Fainthearted animals move about in herds. The lion walks alone in the desert. Let the poet always walk thus.

History is a novel for which the people is the author.

I love the majesty of human suffering.

No writer, no matter how gifted, immortalizes himself unless he has crystallized into expressive and original phrase the eternal sentiments and yearnings of the human heart.

Greatness is the dream of youth realized in old age.

The study of social progress is to-day not less needed in literature than is the analysis of the human heart.

Poetry is the disease of the brain.

We live in an age of universal investigation, and of exploration of the sources of all movements.

What is a great life? It is the dreams of youth realised in old age.

A calm despair, without angry convulsions or reproaches directed at heaven, is the essence of wisdom.

Art ought never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty.

What is the use of theorizing as to wherein lies the charm that moves us?

Silence alone is great; all else is feebleness . . . Perform with all your heart your long and heavy task. . . . Then as do I, say naught, but suffer and die.

The existence of the soldier, next to capital punishment, is the most grievous vestige of barbarism which survives among men.

Do you know that charming part of our country which has been called the garden of France - that spot where, amid verdant plains watered by wide streams, one inhales the purest air of heaven?

Perform your long and heavy task with energy, treading the path to which Fate has been pleased to call you.

What is a great life but a youthful intention carried out in maturity?

An army is a nation within a nation, it is one of the vices of courage.

But it is the province of religion, of philosophy, of pure poetry only, to go beyond life, beyond time, into eternity.

I have a private theory, Sir, that there are no heroes and no monsters in this world. Only children should be allowed to use these words

Hope is the biggest of our foolish things.

Oh, I have a habit of letting myself be lectured on the things I know best. I like to see if they are understood in the same way I understand; for there are many ways of knowing the same thing

Doubt is the freedom of thought. Any claim to truth can be doubted.

France, for example, loves at the same time history and the drama, because the one explores the vast destinies of humanity, and the other the individual lot of man.

Honour is manly decency. The shame of being found wanting in it means everything to us. Is this, then, the indefinable, the sacred thing?

Invisible is real. Souls have their own world.

The human mind, I believe, cares for the True only in the general character of an epoch.

Every man has seen the wall that limits his mind.

The events I sought were never as great as I needed them to be.

What is a great life if not a youthful idea executed by a man of mature years.

The loveliest Muse in the world does not feed her owner; these girls make fine mistresses but terrible wives

Of late years (perhaps as a result of our political changes) art has borrowed from history more than ever.

One is always a good master when one isn’t the master